There are essentially two ways to look at ‘Boyhood,’ as exemplified by the older man sitting next to me sighing derisively every 5-10 minutes, just as I was summoning every ounce of traditional masculinity to keep from sobbing snot bubbles into my milk duds. See, on the one hand, ‘Boyhood’ is an almost three hour movie in which nothing much really happens. On the other hand, ‘Boyhood’ is an almost three hour movie in which nothing much really happens EXCEPT THAT YOU GET TO WATCH A FAMILY GROW. Imagine trying to hold back the flood of emotions when the boy you met at the age of six goes off to… oops, no spoilers. Suffice it to say, ‘Boyhood’ is like all the joy of parenthood without all the hassle of a willing lover or background checks. And that heartless old man can kiss my ass.

As you may have heard by now, ‘Boyhood’ has one big gimmick: it’s a family drama following a boy (Ellar Coltrane), his mother (the fabulous Patricia Arquette), sister (Lorelei Linklater, who doesn’t really look like her family, but that’s okay), and sometimes-absent father (Ethan Hawke) shot over the course of 12 years with the same cast. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear “164-minute gimmick movie,” I immediately yell for the garçon to bring my carriage round. In a gimmick movie, the making-of becomes a bigger story than the plot. “Did you know he shot the entire film inside a coffin??” “Did you know the entire film takes place inside a cave?” “Did you know it’s told from the perspective of a horse?”

Gimmick movies are usually just a dick-measuring exercise for the director, because the truth is, once a story’s on the screen, no one really cares how it got there. What separates ‘Boyhood’s gimmick is that, well, for one, it’s a really good gimmick. It’s not a wacky, one-off idea like combining Abe Lincoln and vampires that’s tired after the first use of it, it’s something that makes you wonder “why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?” And in this case, the only answer, the obvious answer, is that it’s really, really hard. But it actually makes perfect sense. It’s a coming-of-age movie where you get to watch the characters actually come of age. Imagine that.

IFC Films

The movie’s central conceit is certainly its central draw, highlighted by the fascinating journey through lead Ellar Coltrane’s increasingly disastrous hair and grooming decisions. And God, I would’ve killed for that kid’s all-American hair model mane growing up. It looks just as good greasy or clean, spiky or flowing! Fix your hair, kid! You owe it to we the frizzy masses! Anyway, in a lot of ways, it’s a movie built out of mostly inconsequential conversations. Which I realize makes it sound tedious and borderline unwatchable, and that same surface assessment is probably the reason I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch Linklater’s Sunrise/Sunset trilogy. But I defy you not to fall in love with these characters. In fact, the movie is almost a dare. That Linklater doesn’t need to put his characters through any great trials, make them slum orphans or dyslexic holocaust victims, or really put them through really anything too far removed from the experience of the average American in order to get you hopelessly attached to them by the end of the movie. It’s a hell of a magic trick.

Beyond the gimmick, ‘Boyhood’ plays to Linklater’s strengths. Over the course of a career that has been a bit hit and miss since giving the world Wooderson all those years ago, but two things Linklater has been consistently great at are channeling the glow of nostalgia, and depicting knuckleheads who are just the right mix of clownish, antagonistic, and sympathetic. Whereas, say, Aaron Sorkin loves to write David Mamet-esque verbal ping pong rallies between hyper-literate stand-ins for himself (“Ya think?!”), Linklater has that special talent for building intelligent interactions between a couple of inarticulate dopes. Few pull it off as well as Linklater (Sopranos creator David Chase comes to mind), and he’s really gunning for the Burger King crown of undisputed Dipshit Whisperer here. It’s a beautiful thing to watch someone write teenage boys who talk like teenage boys, without softening it for the non-pubescent.

In the same way, conversations that seemed to be intended as profound observations in, say, ‘Waking Life,’ are treated with a healthy dose of critique in ‘Boyhood.’ Where, sure, maybe there’s something profound in what that guy just said, but maybe he’s just being a pretentious 18-year-old. Some of the conversations have gravity, some of them don’t. There are moments of high drama, but ‘Boyhood’ never slips into melodrama because it isn’t about one issue that the characters have to solve. It’s simply this gradual evolution, this series of moments, all the milestones, sticking points, songs, grudges, and inside jokes that eventually make up a life.

IFC Films

As much as it’s about Ellar Coltrane (he kind of sounds like an African warlord who gave himself that name) and his awkward journey to adulthood, his castmates’ evolutions are no less compelling. I didn’t even know you could go through an awkward phase in your late thirties, but Patricia Arquette does, before coming out the other end a more distinguished version of that irresistible nymph from ‘True Romance.’ God, that bone structure. Ethan Hawke gets weasellier and weasellier as his character gets more likable, and by the time he tells Coltrane “I wish I’d been a better parent,” you just want to give him a hug and a noogie all at the same time, his pedophile mustache notwithstanding.

Look, ‘Boyhood’ is not perfect. It could’ve been a little shorter and had the same effect, and right wingers will surely find much to hate in Linklater’s almost pathological need to add Sorkin-esque political jabs every 20 minutes or so (though as someone who grew up the son of liberal teachers in a small town surrounded by fire-breathing religious conservatives I could certainly relate). But the fact that it constantly invites comparisons to your own childhood is part of what gives it such emotional weight, part of what turns you into such a reminiscing, sentimental fool. I can’t even count the number of times I ended up with this stupid/sad smile on my face, and by the end it was like coming home to an old dog with greying fur that looks at you with such recognizable affection in its eyes that you can still see the puppy you brought home years ago.

I promise, I promise I’m not praising ‘Boyhood’ simply because I know how hard it was to make. It opens on a shot of a blue sky with Coldplay’s “Yellow” playing. Do you know how much it goes against everything I believe in to write a positive review of a film that opens with a shot of blue sky with Coldplay playing? I’d just as soon praise Hitler, or Fred Durst. It’s a testament to how much this movie got to me that I could still get emotional with Chris Martin’s idiotic lyrics about how everything’s yellow echoing in my head.

While watching it, I was not sure how much of my enjoyment of it stemmed from my knowledge of the gimmick, and that Ellar Coltrane is approximately my age, so watching the movie was very much like viewing the 2000s through a child’s eyes as I did. It’s like Linklater created the perfect time capsule of the last decade.

In the end, unable to disentangle all these elements, I decided to just give up and marvel at what an accomplishment it is. I’ve been waiting to read your review to see what you’d think about it, and I’m happy that it’s enjoyable to people that aren’t Mason’s age.

Bravo Vince. Summed up my feelings exactly. And the line about the graying old dog got to me more than it should have. Now I am feeling sentimental about the review of the film that made me feel sentimental. Brahmmmmm.

Also…and sorry to get schmaltzy and personal on a comedy blog… But I had a somewhat tumultuous 14 year relationship with someone who had a 6 year old boy when we met, who is now in college. And who looks pretty much exactly like the kid in this (especially as a teenager — total doppelgänger). So for me, relative to this film, I am the Ethan Hawke character. And needless to say it ripped me a new one. Like they were chopping onions in the theater.

For all I’ve heard about this, especially from Brad Brevet on his podcast with Laremy, I can’t watch this. Everything about it is so alien to what I experienced growing up that it may as well be about Linklater returning every year to check on a kid in an isolated Amazon tribe.

“I wish I’d been a better parent.” That would have changed everything if I heard that when I was in my late teens, as I presume is the context. Now, it’d just makes me angry coming from either.

Meh. I’ve never been much for Modernism’s “realism” storytelling unless it was something supremely interesting, slices of life that not everyone gets to experience, because then I can watch and wonder what I would do in that situation. But when a Modernist grabs me by the shoulders and shouts “This is real! Look at it and relate!” I couldn’t care less. I can relate to it because I’ve been through it, and I don’t go to a theater to watch my own childhood flash through my head.

3 hours of short people fighting tall, ugly people and CGI Cumberbatch while Ian McKellen talks all gravely? Sign me up. 3 hours of watching a kid grow up so I can think, “That reminds me of when…”? No thanks.

Part of what makes it an entertaining and watchable 3 hour film is the fact that it doesn’t shout “relate to this” at the screen. It pretty intentionally avoids cliches about coming of age material in story telling and the events are pretty specific to the characters of the story. Most of the craft of film is in creating a pretty sweeping story by way of a bunch of non-events.

I wouldn’t say you’re wrong to criticize a film for trying too hard to be relatable. I hate that shit too. This film just do the stuff you’re talking about.

I was forgetting “The Hobbit” even as I was watching it, while I’ve been (happily) haunted by
“Boyhood” all week. I loved it as much for the things it wasn’t as for the things that it was, and that makes it unique.

@Vince Mancini I suppose I should clarify. Realism often gets folded into Modernism, as it ran concurrently, and many authors incorporated a lot of elements from both into their work. I’m referring less to Ezra Pound’s “Make it new” Modernism and more James Joyce’s “This is how it is” (although hopefully Boyhood doesn’t have nearly as many scenes of people masturbating). As for movies with elves, it’s not a guarantee that the movie won’t have other Modernist elements in it, it’s just that the only one I’ve seen which could be called Modernist is “Wizards”.

@Last Buffalo I haven’t but Vince’s review convinced me that’s a large part of it.
“But the fact that it constantly invites comparisons to your own childhood is part of what gives it such emotional weight, part of what turns you into such a reminiscing, sentimental fool.” Plus “non-events” just doesn’t sound all that exciting for me.

Oh man, the coldplay. I was wondering “Why is this seemingly inoffensive guitar rock putting me off so much?” until I realized what it was.

I thought this movie felt incredibly detailed and well-observed. Little conversations and intense moments all fall into the same expansive, undefinable fabric of time. In a sense, that’s what the film is about. It has no structure and seeks no meaning other than the passage of time. And that’s kind of why it might feel a little bit lacking- Narrative is an imposition of meaning and structure onto the chaos of real life, and this film’s straightforward / linear time / no-plot approach is almost anti-narrative.

Towards the end of the film, the kid asks Ethan Hawke-Dad, “what’s the point?”, to which Ethan Hawke-Dad replies “What’s the point… of everything? I don’t fucking know.” And that, while not a satisfying end to a Joseph Campbell-approved story, is probably the most honest answer you’ll ever get.

It’ll most likely come to City Cinema in Charlottetown. They usually get at least one movie every month that sounds interesting to me but that I never wind up going to see because I’m becoming more of a weird shut-in with every passing year.

It’s a nice place. if you’re worried that because they show indies and foreign films that the vibe will be artsy snobby that’s not the case. Don’t know how far you’d have to travel to get there but it’s a good little theater. (Despite my previous post I do manage to drag my ass outside occasionally.)

@CHG It’s a decent travel distance, well over ten minutes by car. I sort of figured that’d be the type that the theatre would cater to, the artsy and the snobby, which has been a big part of my hesitation to go there. I’ll have to give it a chance though, if both it and its patrons are nice.

‘it’s something that makes you wonder “why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?”’

There was a rumor going around back in the day that Kubrick was doing this for one of his projects (I can’t remember if it was the Aryan Papers or A.I. — although the latter wouldn’t make much sense, I guess.) Turned out to be false, but I wonder if the rumor might have inspired Linklater.

This boy-to-man has already achieved more than I ever could–resting his head on Patricia Arquette’s fabulous melons. I have been after her since Prayer of the Rollerboys, one of the most hilariously awful films ever made.

Vince, I just chimed in here to say I cannot fucking stand passive-aggressive dipshit behavior in the theater like the guy you described. You deserve a medal for not shoving a 64oz popcorn bucket in his mouth.

If you’re that bored, LEAVE. If the movie’s less than half over you can get your money back. If you’re there as a reviewer, shut up and take notes. I don’t want to hear your mouth queefs hinting at your displeasure.

07.17.14 at 7:34 pm

Vince Mancini

If he wasn’t over 70 and seeing the movie with his wife, I definitely would’ve said something.

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He must’ve had a general outline which he filled in. There’s way too many scenes of things he couldn’t have predicted in 2002 for it to all have bee written then, such as the kids petting Obama lawn signs all around a neighborhood. It doesn’t seem like it was made up entirely along the way, though.